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Unreal Tournament 3
Unreal Tournament 3 is the eighth entry in the ''Unreal'' series and the fourth entry in the ''Unreal Tournament'' series. It was developed by Epic Games and published by Midway Games, and was released for Microsoft Windows on November 19, 2007, PlayStation 3 on December 11, 2007, and on Xbox 360 on July 3, 2008. __TOC__ Synopsis Unlike the prior Unreal Tournament games, the single-player campaign does not follow a plot based around the Tournament Grand Championship, and therefore several of the teams within Unreal Tournament 3 are not Tournament competitors. The five playable factions are: Iron Guard, a team of human mercenaries led by former Tournament champion Malcolm; the Ronin, a band of four survivors of a Skaarj attack on a human colony; Liandri, a series of advanced humanoid robots custom-built or retrofitted for combat; the Krall, a savage race of aliens formerly under the leadership of the Skaarj, returning from their initial appearance in the original Unreal; and the team of Necris warriors who have undergone the process of the same name, making them stronger at the expense of replacing their biological processes with "Nanoblack", effectively turning them into undead soldiers (hence the team name). In the campaign, players control members of the Ronin, while the Necris serve as the prime antagonists. In the game's story, set in 2307, some years after the events of UT2004, a Necris attack occurs on a human colony located on an unknown planet, releasing armed Krall warriors upon the dwellers. The colony is defenseless, but a group of Ronins arrives on the scene, defending the survivors. Reaper, the group's leader, advises his second-in-command warrior Othello and his sister Jester to destroy the orbital Necris blockade with a fighter, and orders team's sniper expert Bishop to provide cover as he swarms to save the colony. Suddenly, he is caught in the explosion of an incoming rocket and passes out, but not before seeing an unknown Necris woman shooting a fallen soldier lying next to him. Reaper is rescued by Othello and Jester and wakes up in the base of the Izanagi, a guerrilla force that fights against Necris and Axon, and he meets with the leader, revealed to be Malcolm, who also leads the Iron Guard as the Izanagi's army. He explains that the Necris attack was masterminded by Liandri, who also turn some of the Krall, into Necris, controlled undead soldiers. The unknown woman whom Reaper saw turns out to be Akasha, the Necris High Inquisitor who destroyed the colony and also leads the Necris forces. Reaper wants to kill her for her atrocities, but Malcolm tells him that he needs to prove himself first. Overview Unreal Tournament 3 promised a return to the "feel" of the original Unreal Tournament. Epic's aim was to make the game more in-your-face, fast-paced, and less "floaty". To accomplish this, gravity was increased and dodge jump was removed. However, dodging, double jumps, and wall dodging remained. Gameplay in UT3 stresses close combat and projectile weapons more than any of its predecessors. Development history UT3 was revealed to the world in the May 2005 issue of Computer Gaming World magazine. According to Steven Polge, the entire engine and gamecode were rewritten in order to prevent another situation like that of UT2004, where they had to work on top of UT2003 and all of its problems; the eventual result of what they were doing with UT3 is, according to him, a "bigger leap" than that between UT and UT2004. He then explained that during the early stages of development, the dev team played UT, UT2004, and other popular Internet games on a daily basis, and then play the new game in order to compare and contrast with different things. The first news of it began to appear on or around March 27, 2005. The game was originally codenamed UT "Envy", but later, around May 29, 2005, it was revealed that the name had been changed to Unreal Tournament 2007. It was not until January 25, 2007 at the Midway Gamer's Day event in Las Vegas that it was revealed that the game's name had been changed to Unreal Tournament 3. Early on development, it was confirmed that the (in the words of the developers) "underplayed" Bombing Run, Assault and Double Domination have been eliminated in favor of the gametypes people play, and that the game would ship with around 40 maps, focusing on quality instead of quantity. As for teammate differentiation in team games, it was confirmed that the name beacon from previous games would be back, as well as player glowing upon a certain distance. As is usual in game development, early on many features that were discussed that were later dropped: * A game mode named Conquest was originally announced as a war spanning through multiple levels with lots of destructable features and dynamic things like nanoblack taking over parts of levels owned by the Necris. . Later both Conquest and Onslaught of these game modes were collapsed into a new gamemode called Warfare. * Epic also planned to use UT3 to bring more and more people into the Unreal community, with strong community integration out of the box. In-game lobbies were planned for Warfare, and game stats integration would have allowed you to find similarly-skilled opponents via the UT3 server browser. However, none of these elements shipped with the final game. A global rankings system does exist to allow clans and other players to compare scores. * The Juggernauts, Nakhti and Thunder Crash teams were all considered for this game, however, they were cut. Only Malcolm from the latter team made the cut, but as a non-playable cameo character. * An idea that almost didn't made it into the game was the hoverboards; initially the idea was dismissed as "out there", but eventually, especially after playtests, the idea was welcome. * Other ideas that were considered were blowing up certain sections of the maps in order to frag players, the return of 2004's dodge-jumping, three more Necris vehicles to complete a starting pack of 9. (in the retail game, only six Necris vehicles (Scavenger, Viper, Nemesis, Nightshade, Fury and Darkwalker) were found in the maps) and having Capture the Flag and Vehicle CTF maps sharing a single mappool. At Midnight on Friday, October 12th, 2007, Fileplanet began preloading the game to its subscribers. The demo was unlocked and released on FilePlanet at 12:35 PM on Friday, October 12th. The release was apparently several hours earlier than intended, probably in response to a Norwegian site, "IT Avisen", leaking the demo approximately 5 hours earlier than FilePlanet. The demo, which was Version 3464, came with 3 maps: DM-ShangriLa, DM-HeatRay, and VCTF-Suspense. Of note is that DM-HeatRay was the first taste of the Necris vehicles, specifically, the Darkwalker. Epic called the release an "Open Beta Demo" in an attempt to signify the incomplete status of the demo. Epic promised to respond to user feedback in order to fix issues in the final game. Several issues reported during the beta demo period were fixed or began to be fixed in the first patch. An updated demo fixing these issues was never released. On November 12th, 2007 (a full seven days prior to the NA release), the German version of the game was released to German retailers. In order to comply with German regulations for public game sales, the game had blood, gibs, and headshots removed from the game. Very little else was changed except for the localization to German. The US retail release came on November 19th, 2007. This, however, was the "ship" date, and thus many stores did not receive physical product until November 20th, 2007. The Canadian release came on November 20, and stores put it on shelves the very next day. The European release came on November 23, 2007. Midway announced in March 2008 that they had shipped over 1 million units worldwide. Release dates Post-release content On October 26, 2007, a limited collector's edition of the game was announced to be released on PC. This version of the game features an exclusive collector's edition tin and a hardcover art book. A bonus DVD is also included, featuring more than 20 hours of Unreal Engine 3 Toolkit video tutorials, the history of the Unreal Tournament series, and behind-the-scenes footage of the making of Unreal Tournament 3. The bonus DVD contained a DRM called Anti-WarHawK (AWH) which would disable video playback in isolated cases. The Limited Collector's Edition was being sold in the United States, Latin America, Europe, South Africa, Australia and most other territories. On the 20th of November 2007, AGEIA released a pack of two UT3 maps (CTF-Lighthouse_PhysX and CTF-Tornado_PhysX) to show off advanced PhysX technology. The pack was later re-released by NVIDIA and included one more map (DM-HeatRay_PhysX). On the 27th of March 2008, Epic released their first bonus pack, which contains three maps: DM-Morbias, CTF-FacingWorlds and CTF-Searchlight. On October 20th, 2008, Mark Rein announced via email that Midway and Epic were working on a "major expansion" for UT3 . On January 26th, 2009, the first part of this expansion was revealed in the form of a major patch. This information was first revealed publicly by BeyondUnreal . The second part of this expansion was called the "Titan Pack". On February 19th, 2009, the contents of the Titan Pack were revealed . Two new gametypes (Greed and Betrayal), one new Mutator (Titans), 2 new characters (Nova and Kana from the 360 version of the game), and 19 new maps, including the five exclusive 360 maps and the previous Bonus Pack. The Titan Pack and Patch 2.0 were released on March 5th, 2009. The last and final official version of UT3 is Version 2.1 (3809) also known as "Patch 5". On January 29th, 2009, it was revealed that owners of the retail copy of UT3 would be able to use their CD key to register the game on Steam . Registering the game on Steam provides access to Steam-only features such as the achievements added in version 2.0 of the game. Linux and Mac OS X versions of the game were originally planned to be released as downloadable installers that would work with the retail disc. The two versions of the game were apparently far along with Ryan Gordon even posting screenshots of the game running on the two platforms . However, it was later revealed that due to unknown "legal issues" the Linux installer was not going to be released. The game only works with Windows to this day, however it is possible to run the game in Linux using Wine . On April 3rd, 2014 it was revealed by Glu Mobile (current owners of the Gamespy brand) that the Gamespy multiplayer service would be shutting down on July 31st, 2014. This stood to kill the master servers for the game. Epic decided to release an update that removes Gamespy and replaces it with an in-house solution. This had the side effect of killing the stats tracking for the game entirely and disabling the in-game friend list, however with the update it is still possible to play the game online and continue to host servers for the game. Console versions During development, it was confirmed that versions for Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3 consoles were under development. According to Steven Polge, these versions would contain the same amount of features as the PC version, though the console versions would have slightly tweaked mechanics and settings such as slower speed and aiming help. Before any official bonus content was released, Epic "cooked" a few user created maps and mutators for use with the PS3 version to give those users something to play with. Custom content must be created on a PC first, though. The PS3 version supports both mods and keyboard inputs and, according to Mark Rein, it was said to be graphically superior to Gears of War. The first patch 1.1 is about 44MB and was released on March 21, 2008. It adds the possibility for players of both the North American and European version to play together, fixes problems with some USB headsets, and now displays best ping servers on top of the list. Some updates are only applied on the North American version, since the PAL version released in March 2008 was partially updated. The 2.0 patch was released on March 5, 2009 and adds better PC mod support, smarter AI, 48 attainable Trophies, server-side improvements, an improved map vote, improved multiplayer support (aka split screen), and a new-made UI. The Titan Pack was released two weeks later, and includes 11 maps and a new game mode. On release, the Xbox 360 version had five exclusive maps (WAR-ColdHarbor, DM-KBarge, VCTF-Rails, WAR-Downtown_Necris and VCTF-Suspense_Necris), two exclusive characters ((Kana of the Twin Souls and Nova of the Liandri)), two-player split-screen multiplayer mode, and all the downloadable content released by Epic already on the disc. With the release of the PS3 and PC "Titan Upgrade" patch on March 5, these versions offered the previously Xbox 360 exclusive content plus more, including the two-player split screen mode (the only feature that didn't made it back to the PC). The Xbox 360 version does not support user-generated mods, and additional content will have to be verified by Microsoft before being released. The PS3 version supports actual mods that can be uploaded and downloaded to the PS3's HDD or external media, and then activated through the menu. Game content Gamemodes The game's story takes place in the off-season between the 2303 and 2304 tournaments. It follows James "Reaper" Hawkins, a new recruit working for the Izanagi Corporation after the colony he lived in, Twin Souls, was destroyed by a horde of Krall led by the Necris High Inquisitor Akasha. Your mission is to gather as many resources and allies as possible in order to repel the invasion, but there's more to it than meets the eye when Tournament Champion Malcolm gets involved in the picture. This campaign can also be played in Cooperative mode, alongside other three players. Aside of the campaign, UT3 features several multiplayer and botmatch gametypes such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Duel, Survival, Capture The Flag, Vehicle CTF, Warfare, Betrayal and Greed. With the exceptions of VCTF, CTF and WAR, every other mode uses the Deathmatch set of maps. Characters Five playable races are present in UT3. * Ronin * Iron Guard * Liandri * Krall * Necris New to the Unreal Tournament games, UT3 now includes the option to fully customize your character. Players are able to switch out several armor pieces such as facemasks, helmets, goggles, shoulderpads, torso, arms, thighs and boots. Weapons Items Vehicles Soundtrack Rom Di Prisco and Jesper Kyd composed the UT3 soundtrack. Kevin Riepl also had a major hand in music production for the game, scoring the cutscenes as well as a few in-game music tracks. An official game soundtrack was released November 20, 2007. The 2-CD set contains the ingame music, done by Kyd and DiPrisco, which feature a number of remixes from previous Unreal Tournament games. Not every track are present in the soundtrack. All cutscene music is missing, as are the themes to WAR-Downtown (Strident) and CTF-Coret (Coret), due to those tracks being composed by Kevin Riepl. These tracks were available for streaming/download from his site during some time, along with some songs from E3 videos and other early demonstrations. Unreal Tournament 3: The Soundtrack is primaly based on the original Unreal Tournament score which was composed by Straylight Productions and Michiel van den Bos. Jesper Kyd and Rom Di Prisco re-recorded some UT99's tracks and composed several other original tracks which were released on November 20, 2007 by Sumthing Else. Sandhya Sanjana was featured as a guest vocalist. Reception Reception to the beta demo was generally positive, with most people agreeing that Epic has "got it right." There was some notable dissension from the crowd who enjoyed UT2003 and UT2004 though, particularly about the removal of dodge jump. Unreal Tournament players, which Epic were targeting, didn't switch to UT3 either due to steep system requirements and the overall unstable state of the game for months after release. Upon launch, Unreal Tournament 3 received generally positive reviews from critics. Warfare, in particular, has been praised for being a more strategic and improved version of Onslaught, though the gametype turned off many veteran Onslaught players due to the newer additions. Several issues with the game led to low player numbers, with the key issues being: * Lackluster Single-Player and no Tournament mode: While the Single-Player was hyped a lot, it failed to deliver. It was too long and it completely replaced the old Tournament mode. It also had awkward explanations for classic arena gametypes, like FLaGs (F'ield '''La'ttice 'G'enerators) and that scoring points ran out enemy respawners. * '''Awkward and oversimplified UI: The UI felt very awkward and was very simple compared to previous UT games. There were very little options available for common settings, and overall the UI felt very unfinished. Many settings could be changed via INI, however often these settings do not save, revert, or appear to have no effect. As of Patch 2.0, the UI has been reworked with a new color scheme and more advanced options, fixing many of the prior complaints. As of June 2014, Gamespy has been removed from UT3 which fixed many of the issues with config files reverting. * Poor Server Admin launch: Perhaps the worst problem, due to UT3 being primarily a multiplayer game, are issues with the server admin tools. The initial release of the Windows dedicated server package was littered with bugs preventing a significant number of hosts from running servers. The Linux dedicated server was released a month after the retail game, on December 18, 2007 which left many hosts without any UT3 package to offer. Web Admin was also missing from both the original release and the first patch, though it was released alongside Patch 2 and received steady updates until support ended for the game in 2009. * Modding support oversimplified: Another key complaint with the game is that much of what used to be done in UnrealScript has been moved to native code, supposedly as a way to improve performance on consoles. This, however, has made it increasingly difficult to develop proper mods and mutators for the game in many instances. As of Patch 2.0, modding support improved drastically however it was never as easy as it had been in previous games. As for the Titan Pack, critics complained about the number of servers running the Titans mutator, which gave players the ability to turn into giants with overpowered weapons. Many players found this mutator uninteresting and most of the servers running after the pack was released were running the mutator. Essential Files Here you can find a list of official and unofficial, yet essential, files for your game. Trivia * The game is the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series and the eighth Unreal game. It was once codenamed "Unreal Tournament 2007", but later changed and given the number 3 instead, based on the new generation of the game engine it ran on. The games in the UT lineup are similarly named as Unreal Tournament representing the first generation, Unreal Tournament 2003 and Unreal Tournament 2004 representing the second generation, and UT3 representing the third generation. * PS3 users can download specially cooked versions of various maps and mutators, provided the author supplies them. However, there are some limitations, and custom sounds or music cannot be supported in PS3 versions of the maps due to a proprietary sound codec being used. The XBox 360 version does not support custom content. However, the Xbox 360 version of the game shipped with exclusive maps and characters not found on the PC or PS3 versions, as well as a split-screen mode. These features were added to the PC and PS3 platform with patch 2.0 and the Titan Pack, though split screen support on PC is limited. * The game was deemed one of the "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die" (2013 edition) by Tony Mott, editor of Edge magazine, on the eponymous book. External links and references * * * Unreal Tournament 3 @ Wikipedia * Unreal Tournament III (Video Game) @ TVTropes See also *Unreal Tournament 3 maps *Unreal Tournament 2004 *Unreal Tournament